Hanging Hill

The first thing she noticed when she got close to the house was that the front door was open. Just a crack, a tiny slice of the hall carpet visible. She dropped to a crouch with her back to the front wall. Somehow she’d pictured the house locked and shuttered, not open, like an invitation. She kept thinking of that awful sound, like meat being slapped against a wall.

Tentatively she craned her neck and peered round the door. She could see an umbrella stand, a table. She reached out and pushed the door open. It swung back on its hinges. The hallway was empty. Nothing moved inside. The only noise was the electronic hum of a fridge from the last doorway on the right, where Sally had said the kitchen was.

She hooked out the phone and whispered into it, ‘Don’t answer this, Sally. I’m at the front door, can’t hear anything inside. I’m going to go in now. I’ll be on the ground floor. Start counting slowly. I’ll speak to you again before you get to three hundred. If I don’t, make that call.’

She returned the phone to her pocket, straightened and stood in the doorway. Trying to put height and weight into her shoulders. It wasn’t how you should enter premises, but police school and uniform seemed a lifetime ago and she had to struggle to recall the routine. She held the CS gas at arm’s length and took two steps into the hallway. Waited. Took two more. She stood at the door to the living room, put her head round it, gave it a quick glance, snapped her head back. Nothing. Just a lot of chairs and tables sitting in a silent circle, as if they were having a quiet conversation in the absence of their owners. Then the music room – empty too.

She closed the doors – that much she did recall from training: close the rooms you’ve cleared – and continued down the hallway, checking, throwing switches, closing doors. By the time she got to the back of the house the ground floor was blazing with light. She lifted the phone to her mouth. ‘Nothing so far,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going upstairs. Start counting again.’

The stairs creaked as she climbed, even though she tried to place her feet on the edges, where the boards were supported. This was an old house – it wasn’t neat and painted and scrubbed and nailed down. It had nicks and bumps and the bruises of a lifetime. On the landing, a paper Chinese lantern hanging from the ceiling moved slowly from side to side as she disturbed the air. There were six doors. She worked through them methodically, pushing the ones that were nearly closed with her toe, holding up the CS gas as they swung open. In each one she left the light burning, the door closed. It wasn’t until she came to the last bedroom, Nial’s, that she found any sign of Millie. There, heaped on the bed, were a pair of girl’s trainers and a sweater with Millie’s name stitched on the label inside. She picked it up and went back downstairs.

The kitchen was the sort of middle-class kitchen you saw a lot in Bath, with cabinets painted a dull leaden green and lots of garden flowers in plain, clouded-glass bottles on every window-sill. Double doors led outside to a garden that was invisible behind the reflection of the room. On the bleached oak island in the middle sat two school rucksacks, the name ‘Kingsmead’ on them. A tin marked ‘Cakes’ was open, a solitary cupcake inside, and there were two coffee cups in the sink. The tap dripped on them. A plinking punctuation to the silence.

‘You can come in now,’ she said, into her phone. ‘No one here.’

She went to the table, where two opened cans of Stella Artois sat. She lifted one and shook it. Beer sloshed around on the inside. The drinks had just been left. Like the meals on the Mary Celeste. She saw a small door by the fridge, and when she tapped it with her foot it opened to reveal a utility room, with a sink, a washing-machine and the usual clutter – mops and buckets in the corner, a pair of secateurs on a hook on the wall. The door that led out of the room to the back caught her attention. It was ajar.

She went to it and pushed it open. There was a step down on to a stone patio and beyond it a wide black expanse that must be the lawn. It was surrounded by trees, the sky blocked by their huge inky crowns, the branches moving almost imperceptibly against the blue clouds. She stood for a moment in the doorway, listening to the night. The gentle shush-shush of the leaves. The plink-plink of the tap dripping behind her.

This house wasn’t far from Pollock’s Farm – in fact, the garden must back right on to it. She’d been called out here enough times to know. The last time had been in a thick autumn mist, the day old man Pollock’s body had been hauled out by men who’d been wearing protective suits, he was so decayed. She’d vowed never to come back to that godforsaken place. It wasn’t somewhere you’d want to be at any time, let alone on a night like tonight.

She turned back to the kitchen and her foot hit something. Looking down she saw a phone. She crouched and picked it up. It was a black Nokia. She hit the on switch. Nothing happened. The battery was dead. She turned it over and saw the casing was cracked.

‘Zoe?’

She jumped. Sally was standing in the kitchen doorway, her face white. Her hands were trembling. She was holding the axe.

‘It’s OK,’ Zoe said. ‘There’s no one here.’

Sally’s eyes darted around the utility room. Her jaw was clenched tight. She looked like she might snap in half.

‘Put the axe down,’ Zoe said. ‘Put it down.’

Slowly she lowered it. ‘That’s hers,’ she said, staring at the sweater Zoe was holding. ‘It’s the only one she’s got. She’ll be freezing without it.’

Zoe held the phone out. ‘And this?’

Sally leaned over to peer at it. She gave a small twitch when she saw what it was and closed her eyes. She put her hand out to the wall, as if she was going to faint.

‘Sally? Sally? Come on – keep it together.’

45

Sally blinked. She saw her sister’s face close to hers. Behind her the little utility room was swaying, the colours bleary. She kept remembering Millie on the tarot card, her face, smudged and smeared and ruined. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and her voice sounded miles away. ‘I’m sorry. I got it all so wrong.’

‘Call Nial.’

Isabelle had been right that the tarot was a warning, but it hadn’t been about Jake. It had been a warning about this: all along she’d been warned about tonight.

‘Hey,’ Zoe hissed. ‘Did you hear what I said? Call him.’

‘Yes. Yes.’ She pulled out her phone and tried to dial but her fingers didn’t seem to work. They seemed to be miles away – miles and miles away, as if her arms were very long.

‘Give it to me.’

Zoe grabbed the phone, put it on speaker and dialled Nial’s number. The ringing was distant and lonely. Like part of the invisible dark world out there, funnelling through this tiny channel to reach them. This time there was no answer. It rang four times. Five. Then it went to answerphone.

Zoe shook her head. She took the phone off speaker and dialled again, this time putting it in her pocket and holding it tight against her hip. She took a step out on to the patio, her eyes fixed on the trees.

‘What is it?’ Sally murmured. ‘What’s going on?’

Zoe put a finger to her mouth. ‘Listen.’

Sally came to stand next to her sister and listened to the breathless night. Now she could hear it – a phone ringing faintly in the darkness. It was coming from somewhere far beyond the trees at the bottom of the garden. But just as she thought she’d got an exact direction on it, the ringing stopped. The answerphone again. Quickly Zoe scrabbled the phone out of her pocket and dialled again. The ghostly ringing came again, floating up from the darkness.

‘Pollock’s Farm,’ Zoe murmured.

Sally’s heart sank even lower. She thought about the acres of abandoned land. The decaying farm machinery. The drop and the deserted house at the bottom of it where a man had lain rotting for week after week. ‘God, no,’ she murmured. ‘That’s where they are. Isn’t it?’

‘Come on. Let’s go.’

They checked in the garage and found a huge dragon lamp with a rubberized handle, like the one Steve had bought Sally – it seemed a million years ago. Zoe switched it on to check the battery was charged – it sent a